Issues of Concern – January 2016

Democracy is a revolutionary idea of giving masses the power to forge their own fate. It is the best form of government we can establish and its principles are worth fighting for, even though it is not without defects. These defects and their dangerous effects on the populace, can however be minimized by understanding the powers that take away the power from people and resisting them at every step. One among such powers is of that of Crony Capitalism. Being an inevitable outcome of capitalism itself, crony capitalism seeks to destroy the fundamental pillars of democracy using wealth and main stream media as its tools. This has been the history of democracies everywhere in the world, with the Occupy Wall Street movement a direct result of the same in the United States.

Concern invited Amit to speak on the status of the Maruti Suzuki workers' judicial struggle. Amit is a PhD scholar at the Centre for Economic Studies & Planning, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He is also the Organizing Secretary for the Workers Solidarity Centre, Gurgaon-Bawal.

Free software refers to software that respects users' freedom and community. It means that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. Thus, "free software" is a matter of liberty, not price. Here, "free" is used as in "free speech," not as in "free beer".

For Dan Halbert, the road to Tycho began in college - when Lissa Lenz asked to borrow his computer. Hers had broken down, and unless she could borrow another, she would fail her midterm project. There was no one she dared ask, except Dan.